Primates in Peril

The World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates: 2014-2016
Here we report on the eighth iteration of the biennial
listing of a consensus of the 25 primate species considered
to be among the most endangered worldwide and the
most in need of conservation measures.
The 2014–2016 list of the world’s 25 most endangered
primates has five species from Africa, five from
Madagascar, ten from Asia, and five from the
Neotropics (Table 1). Madagascar tops the list with five
species. Indonesia and Vietnam both have three, Brazil
two, and Cameroon, China, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire,
the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, Ghana,
India, Kenya, Nigeria, Peru, the Philippines, Sri Lanka,
Tanzania and Venezuela each have one.
The changes made in this list compared to the previous
iteration (2012–2014) were not because the situation
of the eight species that were dropped (Table 2)
has improved. In some cases, such as, for example,
Microcebus berthae, the situation has in fact worsened,
due to ongoing deforestation in this species’ small
distribution range in western Madagascar. By making
these changes we intend rather to highlight other, closely
related species enduring equally bleak prospects for their
future survival. One species for which the situation may
have improved since it was first added to the list in 2008
is Eulemur flavifrons, Sclater’s black lemur. While severe
threats to this species remain in large parts of its range,
some populations inside the Sahamalaza – Iles Radama
National Park are now under more effective protection,
mainly owing to a long-term research and monitoring
programme that has been active in this protected area
since 2004.
Eight of the primates were not on the previous (2012–
2014) list (Table 3). Four of them are listed as among the
world’s most endangered primates for the first time. The
Lac Alaotra bamboo lemur, Perrier’s sifaka, the Hainan
gibbon and the Sumatran orangutan had already been
on previous iterations, but were subsequently removed
in favour of other highly threatened species. The 2014–
2016 list contains two members each of the genera
Piliocolobus, Trachypithecus, Semnopithecus and Ateles,
thus particularly highlighting the severe threats that
large-bodied primates are facing in all of the world’s
primate habitat regions.
During the discussion of the 2014–2016 list at the XXV
Congress of IPS in Hanoi in 2014, a number of other
highly threatened primate species were considered for
inclusion (Table 4). For all of these, the situation in the
wild is as precarious as it is for those that finally made
it on the list.
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